1 FACU LDADE DE LET RAS
UNI V E RSI D AD E D O P O RTO
Marta Pereira Ferreira Correia
2º Ciclo de Estudos em Estudos Anglo-Americanos Variante de Estudos sobre Mulheres
Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas:
The Past, The Present and Into The Future
2013
Orientadora: Professora Doutora Ana Luísa Amaral
Classificação: Ciclo de estudos: Dissertação:
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Acknowledgements
(not necessarily in this order)
To the women of my life who share their guineas and believe in education.
To my partner and glamorous assistant for his patience and queer insights.
To Rita, Guilherme and their parents for making life fun.
To Orquídea and Manuela for helping me with my own personal struggle with the “Angel in the House.”
To the Spanish lot who have no fairies.
To my tutors and colleagues at FLUP for the “moments of being.”
To Women in Black Belgrade for their availability and work.
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Abstract
Three Guineas (1938) is Virginia Woolf’s most controversial work due to the
themes it addresses and the angry tone in which it was written. Negative and positive reactions to this essay are amply documented and reflect the intended polemical nature of the text. The past of the essay, the background from where it arose, involves looking at history through Woolf’s eyes, the effects World War I had in her life and later the violent 1930’s in Europe which would lead to World War II, the rise of Fascism and the Spanish Civil War. The present of the text is twofold: it is the text itself, but also ideas discussed by contemporary scholars, which bring Three Guineas into our time. The use of anger as a productive force for a woman writer, the significance of both the printed pictures which accompany the essay and the ones that are simply, but insistently, referred to throughout the whole essay and the structures of power which promote and incite war are some of such topics. The future of the text focuses on the context of the war in the former Yugoslavia, which is strikingly similar to the one Virginia Woolf experienced in the 1930’s. Out of the destruction created by the bloody conflict in the Balkans, a group of pacifists started their work. Women in Black Belgrade, their principles and constant resistance give Three Guineas an application for the future and reveal how Woolf’s insights are valid to this day and continue to be a source of inspiration for those who fight against inequality and war.
Key words: Virginia Woolf, war, non-violence, outsiders, resistance, patriarchy,
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Resumo
Three Guineas (1938) é a obra mais controversa de Virginia Woolf’s pelos temas
que aborda e pelo tom irado em que foi escrito. Reações positivas e negativas estão amplamente documentadas e refletem a natureza polémica e pretendida do ensaio. Para compreender o passado do texto é descrito o contexto a partir do qual surgiu Three
Guineas olhando para a história através dos olhos de Woolf, revisitando os efeitos que a
Primeira Guerra Mundial teve na sua vida e produção e, mais tarde, a violência dos anos 30 na Europa, o Fascismo e a Guerra Civil Espanhola. O presente do texto trata o texto propriamente dito e também ideias contemporâneas que transportam Three Guineas para os dias de hoje. O uso da ira como uma força produtiva nas mãos de uma escritora, de uma mulher, a importância das fotografias que acompanham o ensaio e das que são apenas, mas insistentemente evocadas e as estruturas de poder que promovem e incitam à guerra são alguns dos assuntos abordados. O futuro do texto centra-se no contexto da guerra na ex-Jugoslávia que se assemelha aos acontecimentos vividos por Virginia Woolf nos anos 30. Da destruição causada pelo conflito nos Balcãs nasce um movimento pacifista. As Mulheres de Negro em Belgrado, os princípios que defendem e a sua resistência dão a Three Guineas uma aplicação para o futuro e revelam como as ideias de Woolf são válidas nos dias de hoje e uma fonte de inspiração para aqueles que lutam contra as desigualdades e a guerra.
Palavras-chave Virginia Woolf, guerra, não-violência, resistência, patriarcado,
5 Table of contents Acknowledgements ………. 2 Abstract ……… 3 Resumo ………. 4 Table of Contents ……… 5 Introduction ………. 6 1 The Past 1.1 Virginia Woolf and the 1930’s ………. 12
1.2 Virginia Woolf’s Pacifism ……… 20
1.3 War in Virginia Woolf’s Work ……….. 28
2 The Present 2.1 Three Guineas ………... 38
2.2 You and Us ……… 42
2.3 You and Us and War ……… 51
2.4 Outsider ………. 60
3 Into the Future 3.1 Yugoslavia at War ……… 70
3.2 Women in Black Belgrade ……… 77
Conclusion ……… 94 Works cited Primary sources ……… 99 Secondary sources ……… 100 Websites cited ……….. 106
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Thinking is my fighting.
Virginia Woolf, Diary V
Introduction
Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf’s most controversial piece of writing. The tone used, the issues addressed and the imagery it contains all contribute to a piece of writing which has been perceived as “cantankerous”, resentful and a mere “series of complaints.”1
E.M. Forster went as far as to say that “[i]n the 1940’s I think she had not much to complain of and kept on grumbling from habit” (Marcus 1978:94). Men and women, contemporary of the author or from more recent times, reflect the intended polemical nature of this essay.
In “Virginia Woolf in Her Fifties” Carolyn G. Heilbrun confesses “[f]or many years I was made uncomfortable by Three Guineas, preferring the ‘nicer’ Room [of
One’s Own] where Woolf never presses against the bounds of proper female behavior”,
not without adding, though, “I say this to my shame” (Marcus 1983:241). I claim that it is the fact that Virginia Woolf crossed “bounds of female behavior”, something not expected from a woman and least of all of a privileged woman, that has caused such irate disputes over the relevance and even the legitimacy of Three Guineas.
Elaine Showalter claims that “Woolf was cut off from an understanding of the day-to-day life of the women whom she wished to inspire” (Moi 2001:4), an opinion which echoes some of Queenie Leavis’ concerns at the time of the publication of the essay in 1938 which she clearly exposed in Scrutiny.2 Showalter defends that “Three
Guineas rings false. Its language, all too frequently, is empty sloganeering and cliché
(…) (It’s) irritating and hysterical” (Moi 2001:7). Woolf wrote from her own perspective, from where she stood. She does not, however, ignore women of different condition to hers: “we are weaker than the women of the working class. If the working women of the country were to say: ‘[i]f you go to war, we will refuse to make munitions’ (…) the difficulty of war-making would be seriously increased” (Woolf 2008:167). There is an element of distancing between “we”, the “daughters of educated
1 These were the opinions of E.M. Forster and Batchelor of Three Guineas (Silver 1991:352, 356). 2 “Queenie Leavis angrily denounced Woolf’s feminism as dangerous and silly, attacked her personally as not being a real woman because she was not a mother and as incapable of being a true socialist because she was not a member of the working class” (Marcus 1978:88).
7 men” and working-class women, although there is an indication that the latter are far more powerful due to the direct influence they have in society than her own privileged class, kept away from the public sphere.
Woolf was undeniably privileged and aware of her condition. She did not take it for granted, though. It is not uncommon to see references to money in her personal writings: a “luxurious sense of coins in my pocket” (Woolf 1982b:212) and “how pleasant to have coins in one’s purse” (Woolf 1982a:227); she was aware that the lack of money limits one’s life and that poverty is like a “terrific high black prison wall” (Woolf 1982b:255). In A Room of One’s Own (1929) Woolf offers her opinion about what she considers essential for women to be able to be emancipated: “a woman must have money and a room of her own” (Woolf 2008:4). This was not only preached by Virginia Woolf but she was privileged enough to be able to put it into practice in her real life. She had her money, either from inheritance or from her work, she had her own space to write and, thus, her independence. These factors enabled her to have “a mind of (her) own” (Woolf 2008:237) and, thus, a voice. The shelter the Bloomsbury Group provided was also an important factor in Virginia Woolf’s growth as an autonomous person and a writer. Alex Zwerdling considers Bloomsbury an “extraordinary opportunity for mental expansion” (1986:26, 27). Three Guineas itself proves that an independent woman is capable of doing what men regularly do: criticise, point out serious injustices in the way society is organised and propose alternatives using an angry tone. However, men are not usually “derided for mental instability or ludicrous Utopianism!”3
(Lee 1997:691). The only violence used by this female writer arises from the powerful, shocking words in the essay and the fact that she dares to do it. In “Art and Anger” Jane Marcus remarks that “[w]omen are not supposed to raise their voices, shake their fists, or point their fingers in accusation” (1978:70). This is exactly what Virginia Woolf did in Three Guineas…and that is audacious.
Thinking was her fighting and the only fight that interested Virginia Woolf was intellectual. I intend to show with this dissertation that Three Guineas is a logical piece of writing, understandable given the context, both personal and political, it sprouted from, and not far removed from the real world as it is sometimes remarked. As a text it is still alive and is, as Jane Marcus defends, “a primer for protest and an encouragement
3
Hermione Lee refers to the pacifist pamphlets written in the 1930’s by Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley.
8 for women to struggle” (1978:88). For this purpose I have divided my work into three main chapters: the past, the present and the future of Three Guineas.
The first part of this dissertation, the past of Three Guineas, presents its direct historical context with the threat of National-socialism and Fascism all over Europe, the tangible evidence that could be witnessed in England with the amount of refugees both from the Spanish Civil War and Germany Virginia saw in the streets or read of in the newspapers and even met. Dr Sigmund Freud was one of the many people she encountered living in London escaping the Nazi persecution of Jews. The Spanish Civil War left a terrible indentation in Woolf’s life with the trauma of the death of her nephew in the Iberian battlefield. All these events that will be described in chapter 1.1 took place in the decade Woolf was collecting evidence to write Three Guineas and are, therefore, essential to a complete understanding of this particular work.
With chapter 1.2 I intend to show how the experience through World War I had deeply affected Woolf’s sensibility and helped define her pacifism. Through her personal writings we observe the everyday limitations that an armed conflict imposes on civilians, hiding from air raids, witnessing first-hand the vulnerability of one’s human condition, life reduced to the precariousness of it which became impossible to ignore or dismiss, and the instability conscription inflicted in her own life through the attempted or actual drafting of her own husband and other male members of family and friends. All these facts contributed to an atmosphere of intense discussion and ultimately led to the definition of opinions which were developed, at least partly, due to the extreme historical circumstances. All these experiences and a natural tendency for non-violence delineated Woolf’s need to write Three Guineas. This is the reason why I consider crucial to dedicate a part of this work to the historical background that led to the almost inevitable creation of the essay. However, it is history through Virginia Woolf’s eyes that I will focus on to show how through her diaries and letters she reacted to what was happening, and not simply cold and distant historical facts; I want to place Virginia Woolf in the centre of the troubled and troubling times she lived through.
It is also noticeable how present the theme of war is in Woolf’s whole body of work: personal writings, essays and fiction, which will be discussed in section 1.3 of this dissertation. More or less obvious references to the consequences war produces can be observed but the truth is they are constant. Images of war populate Woolf’s writings: mentally disturbed returning soldiers like Septimus Smith in Mrs Dalloway, grieving widows like his wife Lucrezia and mothers for whom the war would never be over like
9 Mrs Flanders, the mother figure in Jacob’s Room or just the brief interference of war in characters’ everyday lives as in Between the Acts. It is my aim to demonstrate with this structure how war and the threat of it affected Virginia Woolf as a person and as a writer and how logical the publication of Three Guineas seems when placed against this background.
The second chapter of the dissertation will deal with the present of the text. What I have come to call the present of Three Guineas is twofold: it is the published text itself as written by Virginia Woolf, the topics it addresses, but also the contemporary ideas that can be utilised to aid the reading of the work in our days. The ideas of scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Susan Sontag, amongst others, will help me bring Three Guineas closer to our time by showing how concerns raised by Woolf in her essay are still the object of intense debate. Also, the references to daily newspapers, a technique used by Virginia Woolf herself in the production of the essay in question, will be used in this process. It is surprising how little one has to try to find stories in the media today that reflect the preoccupations Virginia Woolf felt in the 1930’s.
Chapter 2 will start with a brief introduction about Three Guineas; it will refer to some general characteristics of the work, its inception, its intricate structure and reserve some room for both negative and positive instances of its reception. It will also address the symbolic significance of the use of an epistolary form, the guineas and the male presence in the text which I consider essential for a complete reading of Three Guineas.
Chapter 2.2 will be dedicated to “the precipice” (Woolf 2008:155) between men and women as observed by the female narrator in the areas of education and the professional world, the need for women to be independent in order to have a voice and the alternative educational plan devised to produce human beings capable of preventing war. Chapter 2.3 will continue to deal with the “precipice” between men and women in the way they look upon war and patriotism, although the connection established in
Three Guineas between the patriarchal system and dictatorship opens up the possibility
of a common interest of both sexes to fight together against the same enemy. I will also address the powerful aesthetic effect of photographs in the essay, both the ones that are constantly referred to and can be looked upon as the ultimate pacifist argument and the physical photographs that accompany the text. Chapter 2.4 will be dedicated to the vision of an Outsider’s Society, Woolf’s plan of resistance, its ethical principles and code of conduct. The crucial topic of the use of anger by a female writer will be dealt
10 with in this section as a means to understand Woolf’s strategy, its effect and the origin of some, if not all, negative reactions to it.
Three Guineas can be looked upon as a dated piece of writing if one focuses on the references of the 1930’s, such as Hitler’s speeches and Baldwin as a contemporary politician, whose opinion and activity was still relevant when Virginia Woolf was writing her essay. However, if one is prepared to apply the concepts exposed to more recent contexts, Three Guineas arises as an essay which presents ideas “that survive unscathed and undated” (Zwerdling 1986:33). As a means to further prove this validity recognised by some authors of Woolf’s essay in today’s world, and to give it an application for the future I will dedicate the last chapter of this dissertation to the historical context of the war in the former Yugoslavia in section 3.1. I am aware that this topic is not the only way to demonstrate the future of Three Guineas. I chose it, however, since the similarities of what is described in Three Guineas, the context in Britain in the 1930’s and the one observed in the 1990’s in the war waged by the Serbian Republic are striking.
The work of a group of Serbian activists, Women in Black Belgrade, born as a response to the war they saw their government incite and promote in the last decade of the twentieth century, will be the focus of the final segment of this dissertation. It is of great significance that the translation of Three Guineas is part of their publication list of works to prevent war and I establish the connection between Woolf’s essay, its ideas and propositions and the informed activism Women in Black Belgrade reveal. I researched their archive and interviewed them as a way to become familiar with their activity and also to better understand their motivations and goals.
I hope to show women crossing the line in different ways, resisting in a manner they found best suited them; a woman writer, female activists going against the status quo to challenge it, question its legitimacy and authority; women who transgress and seem to do what they deem necessary to shake the established order. I have put Virginia Woolf at the centre of this dissertation since “her hope crystallized in a vision of a radically changed world in the distant future” (Zwerdling 1986:325) motivated me to show how that future envisaged in Three Guineas or simply inspired by it, a future of equality and peace is still so distant.
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Last night, beautiful, cloudless, still & moonlit, was to my thinking
the first of peace, since one went to bed fairly positive that never
again in all our lives need we dread the moonlight.
Virginia Woolf, Diary I, 1918
1.1 Virginia Woolf and the 1930’s
When Three Guineas was published in June 1938, Virginia Woolf was dreading the moonlight again. In the last two years of World War I the moonlight gave the enemy aircraft the visibility needed to bomb the civilian population, thus causing fear amongst those who were constantly hiding from air raids.
Europe was going through financial, social and political turmoil and war seemed closer and closer as the 1930’s went by and history unfolded before Virginia Woolf’s eyes. As early as 1931 Woolf wrote in her diary “the country is in throes of a crisis. Great events are brewing (…) Sometimes I feel the world desperate” (Woolf 1982a:39). In the following years the events that took place in her own country, Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain would be continually referenced in Woolf’s writings showing how they affected her life, thinking and production.
Politics was never far from the Woolf’s household. Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s husband since 1912 (Bell 1996a:201), was involved in numerous political organisations, participating in conferences, debating and writing about the national and international state of affairs.4 His intense political activity interfered with Virginia Woolf’s existence as she reveals in her personal writings. In December 1936 Virginia refers to “L[eonard]’s eternal meetings - Labour Party; Fabian Research; Intellectual Liberty, Spanish Medical Aid” (Woolf 1994:94) and in March 1938 “Leonard is in the thick of meetings; the telephone never stops ringing; agitated editors arrive with articles intended to prevent war” (Woolf 1994:219). She alludes to her inevitable involvement in Leonard’s activities due to the fact that quite a few of these gatherings took place at their home turning it into some sort of headquarters of political debate: “I am now in the thick of the political world, and seldom get an evening without someone asking me to tell them what is likely to happen in Poland, Abyssinia, or some such area” (Woolf
4 Leonard Woolf founded with William Robson the magazine Political Quarterly in 1930, a channel for intellectuals to voice their opinions. “It was (…) left Wing politically (…) It proclaimed its object as to discuss social and political questions” (Woolf 1975:207).
13 1994:97). This situation had an impact on Virginia Woolf’s much appreciated and necessary routine as her comments about a visit of Mr Gillies of the Labour Party in August 1937 reveal: “Oh! I’m so furious! He comes to lunch, late, hungry, yet eating with the deliberation and mastication of a Toad (…) It’s 5.30. He’s still there, masticating.” (Woolf 1994:162). In a letter to her sister Vanessa, Virginia shows that, although she respected Leonard’s efforts and ideals, she was different from him and suspicious of political organisations: “[d]on’t tell Leonard this, for he lives in the delusion that they are good men” (Woolf 1994:163).
The Hogarth Press, set up by the Woolfs in 1917, had become political printing books such as A Letter to an M.P. on Disarmament by Viscount Cecil in 1931, Caste
and Democracy by Kavalam Madhava Panikkar in 1933, Quack Quack, an attack on
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy by Leonard Woolf, in 1935 and A History of Socialism by Sally Graves in 1939, to name just a few. Leonard also published a series called Day
to Day Pamphlets “devoted entirely to politics” between 1930 and 1939 (Woolf
1975:161). One of the best-selling titles of this collection of 40 pamphlets was Mussolini’s The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism in 1934, which shows the decade’s interest in the far-right movement rising in Europe.
Although Virginia Woolf complained about the growing frenzy of the political activity around her, she inevitably came into close contact with it and even occasionally made an effort to take part in it. She notes having been to the Labour Party Conferences in 1932 in Leicester (Woolf 1979:109), in 1933 in Hastings (Woolf 1982a:181) and in 1935 in Brighton (Woolf 1982a:345). The latter did make an impression on Virginia, who frequently claimed she was not a politician but who was also not an insensitive observer of the world around her. George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party since 1931 resigned after a vociferous attack on his pacifism by Ernest Bevin. Virginia Woolf registers in her diary: “[t]ears came to my eyes as L[ansbury] spoke” and notes that her “sympathies were with (Alfred) Salter who preached non-resistance. He’s quite right. That should be our view” (Woolf 1982a:345). Leonard agreed with Bevin – “if you were going to fight against Hitler (…) you must have arms with which to fight” (Woolf 1975:245). In fact, the discussion about whether or not to bear arms was one of the crucial issues of the 1930’s. Pacifist stances were taken by several people and organised groups. C.P. Trevelyan at the Labour Party Conference in Hastings in 1933 advocated a general strike in the event of war, the Oxford Union’s resolution of 9 February 1933 stated that “this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and country” (Pugh
14 1980:648,651) and the Peace Pledge Union founded in 1934 “united tens of thousands who accepted the pledge “I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I support or sanction another”” (Rempel 1978:D1214). People were divided between radical pacifist or militaristic views and the possibility and acceptance of an armed conflict as the only way of protection from Fascist and Nazi forces. The League of Nations, of which Leonard was a member, was an example of a group of “people who profoundly desired peace (…) but who in the last resort were willing to accept war” (Lukowitz 1974:115). The Woolfs differed in their views. Virginia Woolf did not only attend conferences to keep her husband company or to adopt his viewpoint. She took sides and defined her own convictions amidst an atmosphere of intense and unavoidable political debate.
In her private life Virginia Woolf met several refugees fleeing from the troubles in continental Europe. These encounters are described in her personal writings. In April 1933 she was introduced to Bruno Walter, a musician and conductor who had left Germany after Hitler had come to power in January of that same year (Morgan 2001:616). She reports their meeting in her diary and how Walter described the situation he had left behind: “[y]ou must think of this awful reign of intolerance (…) Our Germany (…) We are now a disgrace (…) There are spies everywhere (…) All the time soldiers were marching” (Woolf 1982a:153). In January 1936 Virginia Woolf met Aldous and Maria Huxley’s protégée Charlotte Wolff, a German-Jewish woman expelled from her native country by the Nazi regime and who was making a living as a palm-reader. Virginia had her palm read twice and found the experience greatly amusing. Despite showing cautiousness about the accuracy of the activity and confessing to have done it only because the Huxleys asked her, Virginia Woolf decided that she liked her and that the palmist could even be an inspiration for a future fictional character (Woolf 1994:3).
In March 1936 an anonymous girl fainted on the stairs of Tavistock Square, where the Woolfs lived, a “Jewess” refugee, alone in London and going hungry. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary “[n]ever saw unhappiness, poverty so tangible.” This incident shocked Virginia Woolf so deeply that she finished the entry with a sigh of frustration: “[w]hat a system” (Woolf 1985:19). On 24 June 1937 Virginia Woolf participated in a fundraising meeting for Basque children fleeing from Franco’s attacks and although she found the event itself “a bore” she was proud of the collection of £1500 (Woolf 1994:139). A few days earlier her diary reported what she had seen in the streets of
15 London “a long trail of fugitives – like a caravan in a desert (…) Spaniards flying from Bilbao, which has fallen5, I suppose” (Woolf 1985:97). All of these events took place while Virginia Woolf was writing Three Guineas.
The Woolfs’ choice of holiday destinations also had an impact on their opinions. In May 1933 they travelled to Italy and Virginia confesses in a letter to Ethel Smyth: “I don’t like Fascist Italy at all – but hist! – there’s the black shirt under the window” (Woolf 1979:187). What she liked did not matter; the Fascists were there to stay. To avoid the Silver Jubilee of King George V in April 1935 they decided to have a more adventurous, if not utterly irresponsible, break in Nazi Germany. Aware of the possible dangers, Virginia notes wittily in her diary that their plan is to “drive to Holland and Germany, concealing L[eonard]’s nose”, i.e., “our Jewishness” (Woolf 1982a:298; 1985:386). To avert any complications during their journey they carried a letter from the German Embassy granting them immunity and assistance from government officials. Leonard also thought it advisable to meet Ralph Wigram from the Foreign Office who had just visited Hitler in Berlin. “The Wigrams (came) to tea (…) Hitler very impressive; very frightening” (Woolf 1982a:304), though they thought it nonsense that the Woolfs should not visit Germany. What they saw there is reported in Virginia’s diary: “a car with the swastika on the back window”, “banners stretched across the street “The Jew is our enemy”, but most importantly “[w]e almost met Hitler face to face” when they came close to a Nazi rally near Bonn where “all the children cried Hail!” Not surprisingly, their “nerves (were) rather frayed” (Woolf 1982a: 310, 311; 1979: 392). In his autobiography, Leonard refers to this holiday and remarks “there was something sinister and menacing in the Germany of 1935” (Woolf 1975:192). The Woolfs had planned a holiday that Virginia hoped would be “soothing after these incessant politics” (Woolf 1979:383). Instead, what they experienced in Germany was the reality of politics that had been part of their lives for so long.
The Nazi Party criminal activity was widely reported in the British press and Virginia Woolf was not unfamiliar with it. Nor was she indifferent to it as her diary entries and her letters disclose. Referring to the Black Weekend on 30 June 19346, Virginia notes that “this is inconceivable. A queer state of society” and that she “read
5
Bilbao fell on 19 June 1937 (Tuñon de Lara 1983:644).
6 During this weekend an estimated 1200 people were murdered by the Nazis to crush dissent against the party. Hitler seized the opportunity to have the leader of the Brown Shirts, Röhm, and the previous Chancellor killed in a clear display of repression of any possible opposition, to control the party and the country (Woolf 1982a:223).
16 articles with rage” (Woolf 1982a:224). Rage and outrage are clear in the words to describe a vivid scene of this “monstrous affair in Germany (…) these brutal bullies go about in hoods & masks, like little boys dressed up, acting this idiotic, meaningless, brutal, bloody, pandemonium.” The same anger is noticeable in Three Guineas. How could it not? Virginia Woolf abhorred violence and the 1930’s displayed plenty of it.
The situation in Britain was equally alarming. The British Union of Fascists was gathering momentum and The Blackshirt, its weekly publication, was widely available. Virginia Woolf notes seeing a copy of it casually lying in a car in November 1936 (Woolf 1985:36). In 1934 Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist leader, is mentioned in Virginia Woolf’s letters in the first months of 1934 and it is clear that she despised him: “Leonard is caballing with the Labour Party as usual. They think Mosley is getting supporters. If so, I shall emigrate” and again “[w]e are to have Mosley within five years” (Woolf 1979: 273). At this moment the Austrian Nazis were reported to have massacred socialists and “everybody says here that this is the beginning of the end” (Woolf 1979: 277). In September 1935 Virginia Woolf reports in her diary “Mosley again active” and Mussolini is pursuing his ambition to attack Abyssinia which “everybody is talking about” (Woolf 1982a:337).
As a reaction to this intense Fascist activity, numerous movements to counteract it were only to be expected. In a letter to her nephew Julian Bell, in March 1936, Virginia Woolf remarks: “[e]very day almost I get rung up to be asked to sign this, subscribe to that (…) Society bubbles from Society; and what good they do I don’t know; but I sign and I protest” (Woolf 1994:21). It is evident in her personal writings she joined the Committee of the anti-Fascist exhibition run by Elizabeth Bibesco, participating by collecting donations for it (Woolf 1979:368), and Vigilance, a group of intellectuals which included names like E.M. Forster and André Gide, in the French equivalent association. These commitments proved to be disappointing in one way or another and she resigned from both. The first committee was too closely linked to the Communist party and she notes she doubted they would be successful in a letter to R.C. Trevelyan in February 1935 (Woolf 1979:374), whereas Vigilance must have been too intense for a laywoman as she claims to have been “hauled out to Committees and meetings and abused and rooked and at last resigned (…) I withdraw, Leonard doesn’t.” What is interesting is that she adds the following comment: “No-one can’t, alas, entirely withdraw” (Woolf 1994:60, 61). The situation was too extreme for Virginia to ignore it and clearly she did not. In March 1935 Virginia Woolf attended a meeting in
17 Hampstead and met André Malraux who was gathering support for an International Congress of Writers in Defence of Culture (Woolf 1979:290) and in 1937 she joined, with Somerset Maugham and H.G. Wells, a group of writers in a petition to set up commissions to ascertain the causes of international unrest (Woolf 1994:112).
Virginia Woolf’s other family members were also involved in political activity. Adrian Stephen, Virginia’s half-brother and his wife Karin took part in an anti-Fascist “procession” in November 1936 (Woolf 1994:84). Clive Bell, Virginia’s brother-in-law, contributed with “a letter to the N[ew] S[tatesman]7
against war” which Virginia approves of as it reveals “his genuine humanity” (Woolf 1982a:343). In November 1933 her nephew Julian is reported to be “running his museum, for which they need sixty scenes of atrocities”, an exhibition entitled “No More War” held in Cambridge (Woolf 1979:245). In September 1934 Virginia Woolf notes his participation in an enormous and violent anti-Fascist demonstration in Hyde Park (Woolf 1979:329).
It was Julian who would have a lasting effect on Virginia Woolf’s convictions and beliefs as he decided to renounce pacifism and fight against Fascism in the frontline in the Spanish Civil War. To spare his family he agreed to serve as an ambulance driver through a British Medical Aid unit and not a soldier. In a letter to his brother Quentin, Julian expresses his view that “the only real choices now are to submit or fight” (Lee 1997:667) and in a letter to E. M. Forster published posthumously entitled War and
Peace he declares “we have to choose war, not peace” (Woolf 1994:166). These
militaristic views that Virginia rejected and abhorred were now being defended by a young man she loved prepared to risk his life in the battlefield. Virginia was well aware of the dangers involved in such deployment. She was an avid reader of newspapers and did not ignore or avoid finding out about the latest developments in the escalation of violence in Spain since she was collecting material for her anti-Fascist pamphlet around this time, i.e., Three Guineas. She confesses in a letter to Julian Bell in November 1936 that “[p]olitics are still raging faster and fiercer. I’ve even had to write an article for the Daily Worker on the Artist and politics. Aldous [Huxley] is on the rampage with his peace propaganda (…) Spain, which is now the most flaming of all the problems” (Woolf 1994:83). In the very same letter Virginia Woolf reports having received “a packet of photographs from Spain all of dead children, killed by bombs” (Woolf 1994:85). These photographs will haunt the text of Three Guineas, images of the
7
The New Statesman is an influential political magazine still published in Britain. Kingsley Martin, a friend of Leonard Woolf’s, was its editor in the 1930’s (Woolf 1975:207).
18 horrors of war lying on a table as she is writing her angry essay. By the time Julian went to Spain on 7 June 1937, Virginia Woolf was familiar not only with the distant and anonymous reports of massacres of the bloody Civil War taking place in the Iberian Peninsula, but also with casualties closer to home. Wogan Philips, an acquaintance of the Woolfs’, joined the International Brigade and was wounded while driving an ambulance (Woolf 1994:138) and the son of the Confords’, Virginia Woolf’s old friends, had been killed in December 1936 on the Cordoba front (Woolf 1985:54).
Kenneth Morgan remarks “many scores of British working-class volunteers fought in the International Brigade” (2001:618). It seems that not just the working-class joined the anti-Fascist cause, but also privileged and idealistic young men who saw an opportunity to fight for what they believed in. Julian Bell managed to fight for his ideals for just over a month. He was hit by a shell on 18 July 1937 and died a few hours later at El Escorial hospital at the age of twenty-nine. The “very terrible” news of his death devastated Virginia who was “furious at the waste of his life” (Woolf 1994:146, 166). Leonard’s account of the impact Julian’s death had on their life is revealing: “[h]is death and the manner of it, a sign and symptom of the 1930’s, made (a) terrible hole in our lives” (Woolf 1975:253). When in February 1939 Britain recognised Franco’s government after winning the Spanish Civil War, Virginia Woolf was exasperated: “and Julian killed for this” (Woolf 1985:206).
Woolf’s instinctive pacifist thoughts could not comprehend the motivation to bear arms, kill or be killed that seemed to gain support around her. Her nephew and his friends maintained political discussions with her and defended pacifism was irresponsible in the face of the mounting menace from Fascist forces (Woolf 1985:79). This belief was gathering sympathy. Even Virginia Woolf herself argued that Bertrand Russell’s extreme pacifist position in his book published in 1936 Which Way to Peace? “was insane! Complete insanity! To tell us we are to submit to Hitler” (Woolf 1985:33). Nevertheless, she is adamant in declaring she is a pacifist and cannot accept that such a degree of human suffering is the only way to solve conflict. Trying to make sense of her nephew’s decision that ended his young and promising life, Virginia Woolf reflects on his motivations in her memoir of him Virginia Woolf and Julian Bell. Julian believed in a just war, a cause and, although his aunt “understand(s) that (the Spanish Civil War) is (…) the cause of liberty (…) (her) natural reaction is to fight intellectually” (Bell 1996b:258). Virginia Woolf does eventually recognise his merit but she could not bring herself to accept the validity of violence and Julian’s sacrifice. “It had become
19 necessary for (Julian) to go; and there is a kind of grandeur in that which somehow now and then consoles one. Only – to see what (Vanessa) has to suffer makes one doubt if anything in the world is worth it” (Woolf 1994:150). No cause justifies such grief, “a perpetual wound (…) one cant (sic) stop” (Woolf 1994:165). Having evaluated Julian’s opinion, Virginia notes in a letter to Vanessa in September 1937 “[a]t last I think I understand his point of view”, although not without adding “I don’t agree” (Woolf 1994:167).
All these political events which engulfed Europe in the 1930’s and brought heavy consequences on Virginia Woolf’s personal life reinforced her need to write Three
Guineas. As the years went by it seemed inevitable that such a text would have to be
written as “a way of bringing order & speed again into my world” (Woolf 1982b:103). Thinking was her fighting and writing her profession, her medium to share her reflections on a world that made little sense, to ease the “terror (…) of things generally wrong in the universe” (Woolf 1982b:102), an ambitious task that was to be revised numerous times, such was the scale of the project. As early as 1931 Virginia Woolf describes how she had a Eureka moment in the bath and “conceived an entire new book – a sequel to a Room of Ones (sic) Own (…) which sprang out of my paper to be read at Pippa’s Society” (Woolf 1982b:6).8
Over the years the idea developed, the titles changed9 and Virginia Woolf kept “dropping something new into the cauldron” (Woolf 1982b:96), an oblique and visual reference to herself in the role of a witch10, a powerful woman stirring controversy. By February 1932 she claims to “have collected enough gunpowder to blow up St Pauls” (Woolf 1982b:77). Such comments reveal the wish to write a book that would have an impact on society written by a woman who pledges to “go everywhere & expose every cranny” (Woolf 1982b:348), a woman who is not limited and has a voice. Ultimately Virginia Woolf wanted to write a book as an argument with her nephew Julian (Woolf 1994:159) and lay out the reasons why violence cannot be an option to a civilised human being. As if she didn’t want anyone else to dread the moonlight again.
8 On 21 January 1931 Virginia Woolf addressed the National Society for Women’s Service and presented it with her essay “Professions for Women” (Woolf 1979:6).
9
Opening the Door, A Tap on the Door, On Being Despised, The Next War and A Letter to an
Englishman are some examples of the titles Virginia Woolf thought for Three Guineas (Woolf 1979:6).
10 “Most modern writers use the Old English word Wicca, meaning ‘wisewoman’ (…) Matilda Gage was one of the first theorists to describe witches as bearers of an alternative feminine tradition which could give women powers feared by the churches” (Humm1995:299).
20
The moment force is used, it becomes
meaningless & unreal to me.
Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf and Julian Bell, 1937
1.2 Virginia Woolf’s Pacifism
Alex Zwerdling refers to Virginia Woolf as “an instinctive pacifist” (1986:71). On the one hand, Woolf revealed a natural tendency to reject violence, as the quote I have used above shows, an inability to understand the use of force as if it were a different language she did not comprehend, let alone master. On the other hand, documents prove that her pacifism was reinforced by her family and social circles, and also by the effects that living through World War I had in her life. Surrounded by anti-war opinions and movements, chaos, death and loss, Woolf found a fruitful ground for the consolidation of her fundamental view that an armed conflict was a waste of human life.
Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf’s father, when confronted with his male offspring’s future life, stated adamantly that he would allow them to choose any professional area except for one connected to the armed forces or the navy (Zwerdling 1986:272). This attitude was uncommon at a time when a military career would bring honour and social approval to any man’s life. Instead, Stephen recognised the need to oppose the standard belief by refusing to have his family involved in national defence institutions, thus instilling a sense of objection towards such organisations in his children.11 This disregard for the military is clear in the participation of Virginia and Adrian, her half-brother, in February 1910 in what became known as the Dreadnought Hoax, a prank that involved dressing up as high officials from Abyssinia and pretending reverence to the British Navy. “(Virginia) wore a turban (…) Her face was black. She sported a handsome moustache and beard” (Bell 1996a:157-160). The group were disguised as foreign officials and staged an inspection of the Guard of Honour and a full tour of H.M.S. Dreadnought, breaching all possible security rules and showing utter contempt for British institutions. This incident shocked some and amused others when it
11 Leslie Stephen was an “anti-conservatism man” who voiced revolutionary ideas in his early years. He was renowned for his “attacks on religion as the breeding-ground of intolerance and hypocrisy, his support for parliamentary and university reform, Irish independence and Church disestablishment” (Lee 1997:71).
21 became public in the national newspapers but must have made an impression on a young woman who dared mock and defy such powerful authorities.
Virginia Woolf’s “instinctive pacifism” was certainly intensified by the traumatic events World War I brought to her life. She was 32 years old when the war broke out in August 1914. By this time both Virginia and Leonard were already involved in political activities linked to the Women’s Cooperative Guild and in the summer of 1913 they had attended their first Fabian Society Conference (Lee 1997:328).
Leonard Woolf’s engagement in political activities was rather more consistent and persistent than Virginia’s flitting participation in a number of movements. She notes in her diary in August 1917 that her husband went to London to be part of a Labour Party Conference and discuss the possibility of a meeting in Stockholm where the socialist objectives for peace would be laid out; in April 1918 Leonard entertained members of The Committee of American League to Enforce Peace who greatly respected his ideas (Woolf 1976:41, 231).
Virginia was less committed than Leonard to organisations, although she did important work in some of them. She volunteered to work for Women’s Suffrage in 1910 (Bell 1996a:198). She also presided over meetings of the Richmond branch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild for four years until 1923 where meaningful matters were debated including peace (Lee 1997:360). Furthermore, her diary reports that on 13 November 1917 she addressed the Hammersmith Union of Democratic Control, an association created in September 1914 to unite and inform the population about anti-war opinions and advocate the need for a negotiation for peace (Woolf 1977:76). These examples prove that Virginia Woolf was not just a mere observer of the world around her. It is true she regarded all movements with suspicion12, but it is also true that she admired and shared ideas with them. Referring to a Fabian Conference Virginia writes in her diary on 23 January 1915: “[t]he Fabians were well worth hearing (…) Mrs Webb seated like an industrious spider at the table (…) They all looked unhealthy & singular and impotent (…) the idea that these frail webspinners can affect the destiny of nations seems to me fantastic.” But she can’t resist the impulse: “I have now declared myself a Fabian” (Woolf 1977:26). Even though they appear to be ineffective and incapable of changing the world, she decides in the end that their ideas are valid enough
12 Virginia Woolf regarded all movements as flawed. In her diary on 23 July 1918 referring to the numerous meetings Leonard attended at the time she states that “all these movements are as difficult & as much hindered by jealousies and spites as well can be.” (Woolf 1977:171)
22 to proclaim herself a Fabian. Perhaps there is a certain element of irony and a whimsical personality behind the words in the last quote but Virginia Woolf did share the need for peace with the Fabians. The country was at war and there is no denying that it was a long traumatic event that affected everybody’s lives.
World War I inspired, at least in the beginning, a number of sentiments that Virginia Woolf found unacceptable. Thomas Kennedy remarks that “the Great War was (…) the most popular in the nation’s history. Enthusiasm for the war generated a great wave of patriotic wrath”(1973:105). In a letter to her friend Duncan Grant in 1915, concerned about whether her friend would be able to “escape conscription”, Woolf states “the revelation of what our compatriots feel about life is distressing. One might have thought in peace time they were harmless if stupid: but now that they have been roused they seem full of the most violent and filthy passions.” (Woolf 1976:71) The common idea that one had to fight for one’s country, to die for it was repugnant to Virginia and she wondered if the people she loved could avert the dangers that were very real and close to home.
As a reaction to the widespread euphoric patriotism, voices started protesting against it defining peace as essential and total disarmament as the only possible option for a civilised world. Virginia Woolf was familiar with some of these influential voices. Clive Bell wrote anti-war pamphlets (“Peace at Once” and “Art and War”), Adrian Stephen13 was an active member of the No-Conscription Fellowship, as was Bertrand Russell14 (Woolf 1977:18, 122). The latter wrote for the Fellowship’s weekly paper The
Tribunal and his article in February 1918 was deemed seditious by the government15
(Woolf 1977:122); he also held conferences in Caxton Hall in 1916 defending pacifism (Lee 1997:346) at least one of which Virginia Woolf attended (Woolf 1976:78).
However, people needed to do more than just have an opinion to face the severity of measures the British Government was to impose on its citizens. With the introduction of the Military Service Act in January 1916 single males aged between 18 and 41 were conscripted. In May of the same year conscription was extended to all males between the ages of 18 and 41 regardless of their marital status (Lee 1997:112). This would not
13 By July 1918 Virginia Woolf refers to Adrian as a “violent politician (who) delivered an address on Peace on my Guild with the greatest success” (Woolf 1976:261).
14 Virginia Woolf met Bertrand Russell through Ottoline Morrel before the war (Lee 1997:275). She refers to him in her diaries and letters as Bertie. The Hogarth Press would publish his Amberley Papers in March 1937 (Woolf 1994:65).
15 Virginia Woolf writes in her diary on 13 April 1918: “Bertie broken down, & safe to be imprisoned either for his article or for his conscience” (Woolf 1977:137).
23 be the last revision of the conscription law which was updated according to the needs of the devouring war machine. Virginia Woolf registers in her diary on 13 April 1918 the introduction of the Manpower Act which added the need for conscription of all men up to the age of 50 and Irish males for the first time: “[e]lderly men are visibly perturbed. And Ireland has Conscription” (Woolf 1977:138).
The national state of affairs affected the Woolfs as well. “We had a horrid shock … L[eonard] has been called up” (Woolf 1977:56). Leonard was exempted on medical grounds due to an “inherited Nervous Tremor”. The fact Virginia’s health was unstable and that Leonard was his wife’s primary carer also contributed to his exemption. Nevertheless, the government called him up again to reassess his already proven incapacity to join the armed forces. Doctors renewed their recommendation that Leonard Woolf was not fit for conscription. On 6 November 1917 Virginia remarks in her diary “visited for the last time let us hope in our lives, the Recruiting Office (…) L[eonard] was summoned, & given his paper which states that he is “permanently and totally disabled”” (Woolf 1977:72). Lytton Strachey, a close friend of Virginia’s and one of the members of the Old Bloomsbury group, had his exemption granted for medical reasons in March 1916 but taken away in April 1917 as the government were reviewing similar cases. His appeal was successful and Lytton Strachey was not conscripted (Woolf 1976:86,150). It was, however, a long and painful process.
The impending threat of conscription forced a great number of men, among them friends of the Woolfs’, to become Conscientious Objectors but not without consequences. This group were in the hands of the British government and Tribunals with ample powers to decide on their fate. Virginia notes in a letter to her sister Vanessa in May 1916 that Leonard did not evoke conscience reasons for his exemption “which annoys them. It is rather difficult to know what to do as the tribunals are so erratic” (Woolf 1976:95). Conscientious Objectors faced hostile institutions that questioned their ideas and were subjected to long fraught periods of anxiety in between appeals until their situation was resolved.
In May 1916 the Home Office Scheme was introduced allowing Conscientious Objectors to perform non-militarised work as an alternative to a jail sentence.16 Virginia Woolf refers to this possibility in a letter to Duncan Grant “[d]id you see that 4 conscientious objectors were exempted on condition they worked on agriculture?”
16
By this time there were approximately 400 Conscientious Objectors in British prisons (Kennedy 1973:112, 113).
24 (Woolf 1976:85). This was to be the fate of Duncan Grant, David Garnett17, a friend of the Stephen sisters, Clive Bell and Adrian Stephen who were sentenced to farm work since they refused to any form of militarised participation in the war (Lee 1997: 346). Virginia reports in her diary that in October 1917 Adrian obtained a doctor’s note exempting him from his land duties that proved to be too arduous to his frail physique (Woolf 1977:68).
Brock Millman states that “in the winter of 1916 between forty and sixty dissenters were being court-martialled daily for refusing to serve and if convicted were being sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour” (2005:429). These radical Conscientious Objectors, the Absolutists, lost the right to vote for a period of five years with the Introduction of the Franchise Act of 1917. In total this author estimates that approximately five thousand Conscientious Objectors were imprisoned and another thirty thousand served the country in a non-militarised way. Bertrand Russell was arrested twice, forced to resign his job at Cambridge University and had his passport confiscated due to his defence of pacifism (Millman 2005:432,428).
The war affected the entire population of the United Kingdom. Men and women from all social backgrounds suffered, in one way or another, the consequences of the nation’s participation in an international armed conflict. Women, however, saw their status change during this period. Kenneth Morgan remarks “women in Britain were supreme beneficiaries of the war years” (2001:589). In fact, if one puts to one side the ethical problems that benefitting from war involve, women were given the opportunity to occupy places in the public sphere that had been previously denied to them. A great number of women participated in the war effort working as nurses, in munitions factories producing the means of warfare such as shells, guns and aeroplanes or performing clerical jobs outside the home where they were expected to complete housework in exchange for no wages. Now, with their husbands and sons in the fighting front, women took their places joining the national movement to fight a war and win it (Ouditt 1994:71).
On 17 July 1915 the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and her eldest daughter Christabel took part in a march proclaiming the women’s right to serve the country (Ouditt 1994:72), and cooperated with the government in campaigns to enlist soldiers, celebrating patriotism and waging war (Morgan 2001:589,560). “The leaders
17
Vanessa Bell set up home in the countryside in East Sussex, where Duncan Grant and David Garnett could fulfil non-combatant service (Livesey 2007:132).
25 of the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) abandoned all suffrage work (…) and concentrated their services on the pursuit of martial victory” (Ouditt 1994:135).
The White Feathers movement was created for women to have a role in the recruiting of young men to the front. These campaigners would place white feathers in the lapels or hats of men who were seen in public not wearing a military uniform. Their feathers were meant as symbols of cowardice, a form of moral coercion with the intention of exposing and shaming all men who were not involved in the war (Gullace 1997: 179, 192).18 Spiteful women spread the militaristic discourse defined by men and imposed it on men who disagreed with it, who had the right not to believe in it.
However, women did more than just join the propaganda incited by the government, they were involved in acts of war, actively fighting. Virginia Woolf reports in her diary on 7 June 1918 that one of the raids in East Sussex was “carried out by women. Women’s bodies were found in the wrecked aeroplanes. They are smaller & lighter, & thus leave more room for bombs” and comments that “perhaps its (sic) sentimental but the thought seems to me to add a particular touch of horror” (Woolf 1977:153).
Women did not just subscribe to the national discourse and there are numerous examples of women who defended peace and organised themselves to defend it. Sylvia Pankhurst opposed her mother’s and sister’s ideas and led the dissident East London Federation of Suffragettes created in 1913 which linked militarism to oppression thus, refusing to support the war; the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1915) worked in conjunction with other groups to pursue their belief that war should be ended by negotiation and compromise; the leading pacifist society from 1914 to 1924, the Union of Democratic Control, linked to the Labour Party and established by Charles Trevelyan and Arthur Posonby19 had Helena Swanwick as one of the most active and influential members; Catherine Marshall was deeply involved in the No-Conscription Fellowship and is claimed to have been responsible for persuading Bertrand Russell to join the association (Ouditt 1994:136, 140, 141).
Surrounded by anti-militaristic opinions, which intensified during the war years, and faced with real threats that didn’t spare those close to her or herself, Virginia Woolf
18
Members of the WSPUfounded by Emmeline Pankhurst were the first women to hand out white feathers (Ouditt 1994:135).
19 Charles Trevelyan’s brother, Robert was a personal friend of the Woolf’s and a regular visitor (Woolf 1977:93); Virginia Woolf knew Arthur Ponsonby through Leonard’s involvement in the Labour Party and records having been to one of his talks in November 1918 (Woolf 1977:434, 222).
26 lived through these troubled times in a country willing to sacrifice its citizens to win a war, resorting to propaganda which humiliated and punished those who were against the supposed national interest. Her diary reveals how the war interfered with her daily mundane life. The food shortages are a constant reference: “I counted my lumps of sugar, 31.”; “[e]verything is skimped now. You can’t buy chocolates, or toffee; flowers cost so much that I have to pick leaves instead. We have cards for most foods”; “[t]he bakers windows now provide almost nothing but little plates of dull biscuits; sections of plain cake; & little buns without any plums. If you see a plum, it is invariably a decoy plum; there are no others” (Woolf 1977:81, 100, 112). Food is counted, rationed, the dishes in the bakery are small as are the buns, dull, plain, bland buns and the fruit, should you see any, is make believe.
These facts limited her life, but there were far greater tragic events, inevitably brought on by the war, which affected the Woolfs. On 3 December 1917 Virginia reports in her diary the death of Cecil Woolf and the injuries of Philip Woolf, Leonard’s brothers, hit by the same bombshell in the front in the Battle of Cambrai in France (Lee 1997: 351); on 12 October 1918, when the war was almost over, Virginia refers to the death of Margaret Llewelyn Davies’20 nephew (Woolf 1977:83, 200); in a letter to Lady Robert Cecil on 16 June 1916, she writes: “[t]he war is a nightmare isn’t it? Two cousins of mine were killed last week, and I suppose in other families is much worse” (Woolf 1976:100).
The constant air raids endured by the Woolfs are mentioned repeatedly in Virginia Woolf’s writings. She refers to herself as feeling anxious and describes how she hid in the basement in the middle of the night with Leonard and the servants and how “one must talk bold & jocular small talk for 4 hours (…) to ward off hysteria” (Woolf 1977:55, 85, 116).
Seeing London, the city she loved, disfigured by the war saddened her and what it did to people, that “horrible sense of community which the war produces, as if we all sat in a third class railway carriage together” (Woolf 1977:121, 153), caused her anguish as the population were united in a degrading way and equal in the tragedy, misfortune and vulnerability they shared. Even the Armistice Day celebrations seemed “sordid and depressing (…) nobody had any notion where to go or what to do” (Woolf 1976:292). The war had finished but the scars it left behind were not erased by drunken festivities
20
Margaret Llewelyn Davies was a leader of the Women’s Co-Operative Guild and a friend of the Woolfs’.
27 in the streets. Five million men served the country between 1914 and 1918 (Zwerdling 1986:282) in a conflict which inaugurated horrors such as gas and tanks as weapons and the use of aerial and submarine warfare on a large scale; approximately one million British people lost their lives and more than two million were wounded (Trevelyan 1987:549, 550). In June 1916 sixty thousand allied troops perished in the Somme in one day alone (Morgan 2001:585). These numbers seem unreal, to use a word Virginia Woolf used herself, but show the true scale of this war.
The effects of this conflict would last in Virginia Woolf’s memory and beliefs. In 1937 she would say of her generation: “we were all C[onscientious] O[bjector]s in the Great War” (Bell 1996b:258). Even though as a woman Virginia Woolf was not expected to fight in the war, she classifies herself as someone who would have refused to hold guns and use them. She would maintain the conviction that violence is absurd until the end of her life and her work, fiction, essays and personal writings reflect the horrors of the war she survived, and question its legitimacy.
28
One has come to notice the war everywhere.
Virginia Woolf, Diary I, 1918
1.3 War in Virginia Woolf’s Work
Virginia Woolf’s work is full of images of war. As the epigraph above reveals she noticed war everywhere in her life and this can be seen in her production. Armed conflict is a recurrent theme and quite often assumes a predominant role in her personal writings, essays and fiction.
In the previous sections of this work I have shown how we can follow history quite accurately through the letters and diaries of a writer who lived through World War I and experienced the threatening 1930’s which would eventually lead up to World War II. The Spanish Civil War, although taking place in a foreign territory, also played an important part in her life as her nephew volunteered to participate in the battlefield and was killed in action. Virginia Woolf did not live to see the end of World War II, but she saw the destruction and death that it caused up to March 194121: “the passion of my life, that is the City of London – to see London all blasted, that too raked my heart”; “everyone (…) in that house (…) had sheltered in the basement. All killed I suppose.” London was being bombed and to add to the intensity of the experience, the Woolfs were personally affected and were forced to permanently move to Rodmell, their weekend refuge in the countryside: “[w]e have been completely bombed out of London”22 (Woolf 1994:431, 429, 483).
The essays Virginia Woolf produced also show war as an important issue; a reflection of the times she lived in. In The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Woof reviewed the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon in “Mr Sassoon’s Poems” (1917), which she defends as having such a powerful effect on the readers that “we say to ourselves, ‘Yes, this is going on; and we are sitting here watching it’”; and “Two Soldier Poets” (1918) where the poet shows “the terrible pictures which lie behind the colourless phrases of the newspapers” (Woolf 1995a:120, 269, 270). “War in the Village”, a review of Maurice Hewlett’s poem The Village Wife’s Lament published in the TLS
21
Virginia Woolf committed suicide on 28 March 1941(Woolf 1994:481).
22 Both houses rented by Virginia and Leonard Woolf were bombed in World War II. 37, Mecklenburgh Square was the first to be hit by bombs in September 1940 and 52, Tavistock Square followed a month later. The Hogarth Press had to be moved from Mecklenburgh Square to avoid complete destruction. (Woolf 1994: 428, 432)
29 reflects on a woman, a war widow, a rural woman who is affected by war, “a force so remote (…) she can hardly figure to herself what the nature of it is” (Woolf 1995a:292, 293). Woolf shares with the author a sense of incomprehension of violence and the suffering it inflicts on people who, although not immune to its consequences, take no part in the decision to start a conflict. She will reveal in her later essays her interest in understanding the origins of war, the forces behind it. Such themes are the essence of her 1938 work Three Guineas and Thoughts of Peace in an Air Raid published in 1940 in the New Republic based in New York.
Not surprisingly, Virginia Woolf’s fiction is also filled with references to war.
Jacob’s Room was published by the Hogarth Press on 22 October 1922, with a dust
jacket designed by Vanessa Bell, inaugurating Virginia Woolf’s freedom from other publishers (Hussey 1996: 126). Leonard’s reaction to this novel is reported in Virginia Woolf’s diary: “[h]e thinks it my best work (…) He calls it a work of genius (…) he says that people are ghosts; he says it is very strange” (Woolf 1978:186).
Indeed, the experimental narrative of Jacob’s Room takes us through fragmented episodes of Jacob’s life, which we follow trying to grasp its reality and make sense of the rather sketchy information provided only to find out in the very last words of the novel that Jacob has been dead all along. It is the life of a ghost we are reading about and the book is riddled with allusions to Jacob’s elusive nature. Throughout the novel he is rendered “profoundly unconscious”, “indifferent, unconscious”, “extraordinarily vacant” and intangible “there is that young man (…) I don’t see him (…) No, you can’t see him” (Woolf 2012a:426, 438, 440, 531). He cannot be grasped as he has ceased to exist, there are only memories left. If one tried collating memories of a dead person, the result would be similar to Woolf’s narrative, a dispersed series of events which, pieced together, shape a vague, nebulous image of the life of a human being, so complex in itself. The result could only ever be the shadow of the person sought. Full knowledge and understanding is impossible, therefore scraping memories is all that can be done to attain a certain level of meaning and to connect us to others, to maintain a link with the past.
From the first pages of Jacob’s Room we learn the family portrayed holds a surname which in 1922, the post-war period that enclosed recent and traumatic memories, was synonymous with fighting, war and death (Zwerdling 1986:64). Flanders is not just a surname; it is like a premonition engraved in people’s lives, as are the tears Mrs Flanders sheds at the beginning of the book. We witness Jacob’s mother weeping
